


Five Things That Never Happened to the Master

by trollopfop (storyinmypocket)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyinmypocket/pseuds/trollopfop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mercy, regret, silence, loneliness, and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things That Never Happened to the Master

**I. Mercy**

In a time of complexity, the Master thinks, balance demands acts of simplicity. Why bother with clever plots when their world's coming apart around them?

So, of all the myriad ways of killing the Doctor, he's chosen the quickest and cleanest yet. It's just a matter of sneaking aboard the Doctor's TARDIS, waiting for just the right time. The war's already over, and it's only a few deluded fools (such as the one he's come to kill, perhaps) that imagine otherwise.

A nagging sense of self-preservation tells him he should be running, but this may be his last chance to settle things. He still owes the Doctor a death, after all.

When he emerges into the console room, the first thing he feels is disappointment. The Doctor barely looks up, absorbed in what can only be one of an endless string of desperate gambits to try and turn the war in their favour.

"We've already lost, you know." He moves closer to the console, curious as to what this latest trick entails, but stops short once he sees the information on the screens.

"I know," is all the Doctor says, his voice dull. The Master pauses to examine the emotion that courses through him at those words, some strange mixture of shock and grief.

He's too late. The Doctor's last regeneration created a poet, a scholar, someone entirely unsuited for the atrocities of war, and for it to come to this... _I've come to kill a man who's already dead,_ he thinks.

"You're going to burn it all," he says aloud, watching the console. "Release the Eye, and..." It's the only way to keep the Daleks from taking everything, but the cost is one he'd never expected the Doctor to accept.

The Doctor just nods. "Help me." The words are faint, as the Doctor's hand hovers over the last few buttons. "I can't... _help me."_

The Master steps close, one hand reaching up to comb through curls tangled and sweat-damp, the other covering the hand that hovers above the console. Bodies together, fingers entwined, and the Doctor smells of resignation and fear.

"Together, then." And it's almost like long-ago days at the Academy, almost like friendship, as he guides the Doctor's hand in giving the TARDIS the instructions that will end everything.

One hand drops from the Doctor's hair, and he lets the blade slide from his sleeve and into his palm, bringing it across the Doctor's throat in one easy movement, still holding tightly to him. He can't bring himself to let go, though he's not quite sure why it should matter. Thoughts chase each other around his head, things like _At last, I've done it,_ and, incongruously, _See what happens when you don't let go? Now your sleeves are wet,_ as the Doctor bleeds over them both.

And then all he knows is fire and pain. as every other Time Lord in existence burns. The one in his arms, at least, will be reborn -- he can't feel the others dying, too caught up in his own regeneration, but the Master can. As the drums in his head build to a crescendo, he can hear the final shriek of a world as it's consumed by the forces that made it mighty, he can see the destruction on every screen in the TARDIS, but the Doctor... The Doctor's been spared this.

 _Almost like friendship?_ the Master thinks, idly comparing the way the Doctor's body convulses against him to the way space and time convulse around them both. He's outgrown such illusions. Outgrown mercy, or so he tells himself.

And, still holding the Doctor, nursing him through yet another death, he laughs.

 

**II. Regret**

He's never known pain like this. Never expected it to come from this source, not _him,_ of all people.

"What's happened to you?" he asks the mad thing before him, staring into eyes that once held reason.

"You said it yourself. I'm the _Doctor._ I make people better. And I think," the Doctor says, selecting a blade from the assortment on the table, "I'll start with you."

This is what he wanted: the Doctor broken, mad, stripped of everything that made him who he was.

The Master might be crying, but there's so much blood he can no longer tell.

 

**III. Silence**

He closes his eyes, and he listens. Just his hearts beating. Only that.

_::Is it so bad?::_

The thought brushes his mind, soft and flickering like a moth's wings, and he shifts position, allows the corners of his lips to quirk upwards ever so slightly. "The silence, you mean?" He doesn't need the words, not with the two of them this close, but he uses them anyway, because for once he can listen to his own voice and hear nothing else.

The Doctor nods next to him, then stretches, his body making a perfect, graceful arc, sheets pooling around his waist, and the Master considers that beds are a wonderful invention, if they lead to tableaux such as this.

"No. It... really isn't. For you?"

 _::It's bearable. They're not as loud with me. Not yet.::_ Odd, that the Doctor's not trusting his voice, but understandable. When the drums began, the Master -- no, Koschei, just Koschei, as he was before and can be again, if he chooses -- was afraid of the sounds, the cadences. Was afraid of what he'd become.

"As always, you're pathetically self-sacrificing. One of these days..." _One of these days, I'll use that to destroy you,_ he thinks, but doesn't say. There's no need to say it, possibly no need to do it anymore, but he's reserving judgment on that matter. Perhaps this is a change of heart. Or perhaps he already has.

It's a brave new world. Anything could happen.

"Do tell me, Doctor, when they grow louder. Because they will." His voice at its most seductive, full of promises, though he couldn't tell you just what it is he's promising. "And when they do... Well." He smiles. "It'll be _interesting,_ won't it?"

 _::Oh, I know...::_ And the Master hears them then, just a fleeting echo behind a thought darker than anything he'd have given the Doctor credit for... Just a hint of a shadow passing across his mind, and then gone, and it's just two old friends, one bed, and a closeness they lost centuries ago.

It's a beginning, though neither of them is quite sure of what.

 

**IV. Loneliness**

He still visits Earth sometimes. It's good to remember, he thinks to himself. Good to know that there's a resting place at the end of it all, with Gallifrey gone.

He's raised a monument to his old enemy. The pillar is black, and the roses left on the snow at the monument's base are the same red as the blood that... No, best not to think of it. Roses grew on Gallifrey, once, and they're the only fitting offering he can leave. There's a title carved into that pillar, with a name beneath it that only he recognises, in a language only he's left to speak.

He returns there more and more now. It's the only place he can think.

"What do I do now, Doctor?"

The pillar doesn't answer.

"What, no words of wisdom? No promises to _help_ me?" He presses his cheek to the cold stone, runs his fingers over the name.

"I've won, you know. All the universe, united, in an empire even Rassilon would have envied. It's all mine. And what can you do about it, hmm?"

He pauses, considers. "No more war. No more killing, unless I'm feeling particularly bored that day. But you can't hold that against me, can you? It's universal peace. You'd like it.

"It's _good,"_ he says, not sure who he's trying to convince. "It's really, really good. Remember the Academy? How we always talked about how wonderful things would be if we could just make everyone _listen?_ They're listening now, Doctor. They've got no choice."

The silence presses down on him, like an accusation.

"Don't give me that. Don't start on free will. It was a failed experiment from the start, and you know it." He laughs a little. "But then, I forget. You can't give me that." He whispers to the pillar, lips barely brushing the surface, still caressing the stone. "You've burned like all the rest. Was it what you wanted? Better than remembering all the ways you failed, I'd imagine. But I've succeeded, Doctor. _Me._ After all this time. Did you think I'd be second-best forever?"

Still, no answer, and he knows he's mad for expecting one. But really, when has that ever stopped him?

 _"Answer_ me, Doctor. Show me your superiority. Show me your insufferable smugness _now._ Tell me how wrong I am. Go on. Cheat death! Come back and tell me!" He slams his fist into the pillar, feeling the skin over his knuckles split, but when he speaks again, his voice is softer. "Come back, while I still remember. There's so much I don't, now. Places in my head where there were things, and now just..." He taps out the rhythm again, the one he knows better than his own heartbeats. "You should have heard them. You really should have, just once. Just so you'd know."

He closes his eyes and breathes an almost-forgotten name, hands running over each carefully carved character. He's not sure whether it's an accusation or a plea. He can't stop hoping for a reply, but all he hears are the drums. All he feels is another part of himself fading in the space between drumbeats.

He has two things left to hold on to: a piece of stone, and an imagined ghost. Neither is enough.

"I've won," he says again.

He doesn't believe it this time, either.

 

**V. Love**

_They're old men when they leave Gallifrey, and they're both content to be so, neither one quite willing to regenerate yet. There's a whole universe waiting for them, and exile seems a small price to pay._

_Susan comes with them, bright-eyed and curious, and he is "Uncle" where the Doctor is "Grandfather", and he finds he minds this not at all._

_Their days are full of adventure, showing Susan all the wonders of the universe. Their evenings are spent in a haze of pipe smoke and good-natured complaints, enjoying the privileges of the temporarily aged. And after Susan's gone to bed (because she's a young thing still, and requires far more rest than their meagre score of hours in a week), they turn from exploring the cosmos to exploring each other, bodies and minds coming together only to break apart, over and over again._

_He is happy. He can't imagine being anything else._

When the Master wakes, the drums are pounding through his head, and the sheets are soaked with sweat.

"That never happened!" he screams into the darkness. Beside him, Lucy stirs, says something. She sounds concerned, but he ignores her words, surging out of bed and heading for the door. If he could slam it behind him, he would.

The halls pass in a blur, looking all but identical, and it really doesn't matter, because his feet know the way -- they always do seem to lead to _him,_ in the end. He stalks to the birdcage, whipping the cover off -- such an amusing conceit when he thought of it earlier, now just one more thing between them, one more thing for his enemy to hide smugly behind. He watches the shriveled remains of the Doctor blink in the sudden rush of light, and it should satisfy him. Should, but doesn't.

"It's your fault, isn't it? Tell me you did this! Tell me you _knew!"_ He rips the cage from its stand, throwing it against the wall where it clatters and rolls. The Doctor lies there, his breathing labored, but still infuriatingly alive, staring at him.

"I've been _contaminated,"_ he says, face twisted into a snarl. "Allowing myself to sleep. Dreaming like a _human._ I know you did this, Doctor." He makes the title an insult, scorn dripping from each syllable. "I don't claim to know how, but this is _your_ fault."

It's the pity and the terrible understanding in the Doctor's eyes that finally drive the Master back to the bedroom where Lucy's waiting, all soft, pliant flesh, a perfect vessel for his rage. He won't be pitied, but he's quite content to be feared.

The next morning, the cage has been righted, and the Doctor just looks at him with too-large eyes, the same as always.

The Doctor doesn't ask. The Master doesn't explain. That night never happened, and only the bruises marring Lucy's skin tell a different story. It's a quiet one, told in whimpers and the mottling of healing flesh; easy enough to ignore for a night, or perhaps for a lifetime.

At least, that's what he tells himself, and there's no one who dares argue.


End file.
